Ishan Clemenco (born 1955) began his career as a composer whose early work was
concerned with just intonation and extended duration associated with 60s
minimalism.
Private composition residencies with Lou Harrison (1917-2003) and poetics studies
with Anne Waldman at Naropa Institute, led to extensive Asian travels. After two
years on the Indian sub-continent and a survey of European Megalithic sites he
visited the Parisian atelier of Constantin Brancusi, where he resolved to translate the
concerns of intonation and duration in music into treatments of surface and volume
in constructed sculpture.
Ishan Clemenco had his first solo exhibition of chalk-line wall drawing with Takada
Gallery in San Francisco in 2002. He participated in Steirischerbst:03, at Graz,
Austria, curated by Walter Kratner, and had a solo exhibition of wall drawing and
works on paper with smART, curated by Sibylle Müller, at Münich, in 2003.
In 2010 NOMA Gallery presented a site-specific solo exhibition of chalk-line
drawing on colored light-filters and produced the limited-edition 10-inch vinyl album
“afterlight” as an artist multiple, in conjunction with the exhibition. “afterlight” is part
of The Steven Lieber Audio Collection MOMA.
In 2015 he participated in the performance series Directions Given/Directions Taken,
curated by Michael Swaine, at Southern Exposure. Describe Perimeter, the graphic
score for the circumnambulation of a San Francisco city block, with 1,250+ feet of
braided orange mason line, was realized in performance during the series.
In June, 2016 he traveled to Black Mountain School in North Carolina where he
delivered an artist talk and made a site-specific sound-installation as part of the reconfiguration
of the school, on the original site of Black Mountain College
